Top Video Editors for Adding Subtitles and Captions to Your Videos

How many people are actually hearing your message?

Image by Chelsea Ortega on Canva

Video, the ultimate multipurpose medium — from education and advertising to entertainment and communication — has taken over the world.

Let’s talk about four video editing tools that can help you effortlessly caption your videos, making them more accessible and comprehensible.

But first…

Why do your videos need subtitles?

Subtitles in videos are no longer a nice to have but a necessity. Here’s why you need subtitles.

Accessibility

They ensure that those hard of hearing can still understand and engage with your content.

And instead of verbatim transcriptions, you can be as descriptive as necessary, like in the case of SDH (Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing).

Compensating for poor audio quality

They’re a cost- and time-saving alternative to rerecording or heavily editing botched audio tracks.

Translating your videos into different languages local to your audience

You can reach a broader international audience without compromising the original audio experience.

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Helping language learners practice

For non-native speakers, viewers can improve their reading, listening, and speaking by following along with the audio.

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Why are Subtitles Important?

Types of subtitles and captions

There are two main types of subtitles.

1. Closed captions: These can be toggled on or off within the video player
2. Open (embedded) captions: You can’t go wrong with these — they’re essentially burned onto the video track and thus accessible universally, eliminating the need for external SRT files and the synchronization issues they entail

Let’s talk about four great video editors and how you can use them to embed captions within your videos.

Popular video editors for captioning your videos

Movavi

A user-friendly platform with a comprehensive set of features, Movavi Video Editor, is one of the best video editing tools for adding captions.

Here’s how to go about it.

1. Click “Add Files” to import your video.
2. Drop the video into the “Timeline” section.
3. Click “Titles” on the left to choose a caption style.
4. Drag the selected title style to the Timeline.
5. Double-click the title to add text.
6. Adjust timing and pace in “Clip Properties.”
7. Customise fonts in “Font Properties.”
8. Modify the color scheme in “Color Properties.”
9. Click “Export” to save the video with embedded subtitles.

Camtasia

If you have a too-tight budget to hire a professional voice-over agency, this tool comes in handy.

Camtasia is another powerful video editor with screen recording, voice-over, and more. It’s also great at synchronizing text with audio tracks.

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Below is the process for adding captions in Camtasia.

1. Open the video file in Camtasia.
2. Go to the “Captions” tool.
3. Click on “+ Add Caption.”
4. Type in the text you want to display as captions.
5. Adjust the font size, color, and position of the captions as desired.
6. Save the video.

OpenShot

OpenShot is a free yet feature-rich open-source video editing tool that can tell your stories for you.

The captioning process on OpenShot is super easy to follow.

1. Import your video into OpenShot.
2. Click on the “Titles” button in the toolbar.
3. Create a new title or import an existing caption file.
4. Type in your captions or paste them from a text file.
5. Adjust the font style, size, color, and position for the captions.
6. Save your video.

VEED

VEED is an intuitive online video editing tool that’s great for quickly creating professional-quality videos without downloading and installing.

There’s a very simple process for adding captions in VEED.

1. Upload your video to VEED.
2. Click on the “Captions” button.
3. Type in your captions.
4. Preview your captions.
5. Export the captioned video.

Use these four powerful video editors to effortlessly add captions to your video content and boost accessibility, interest, engagement, impact, and appeal that transcends geographical barriers!